Greg Sandoval over at CNET wrote a post this week that poses the question – “Steve Jobs – a music visionary?”The CNET post almost seems to grade Apple’s performance in the music business against Steve Jobs’ past predictions for the future of digital music. Jobs’ predictions were given in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine in 2003.In the CNET post, I believe Greg Sandoval subtly inferrs Jobs is a visionary because iTunes now has a whopping 75% market share of digital downloads selling about a billion songs every six months.I enjoyed reading the predictions Steve Jobs shared with Rolling Stone . However, I wished the CNET post took the focus off of Mr. Jobs and instead posed this question – “Is iTunes itself visionary?”. It certainly is a very important distribution platform with a large audience and array of content. Artists like myself certainly do everything we can to make sure our music is available to this large iTunes audience.I wish iTunes would become more visionary though. What do I miss in my iTunes experience? In my opinion, there is a simple answer – discovery and community. I understand there is the Apple “Genius” feature which recommends songs and builds customized playlists. I’m talking about a deeper sense of discovery focused around content, lyrics, credits, bios – and community around that very same content. Maybe its on the iTunes roadmap. In the video below, I talk a little bit about what I mean with regards to a deeper music discovery and community experience. Please watch, and feel free to share your own thoughts on your own digital music experience in the comments.

Wow. Just had someone send me a link to David Bergman’s 1,474-Megapixel photo of President Obama’s inauguration. The image was made by stitching together 220 separate digital images, and it allows you to zoom in on individuals within the estimated 2 million people in attendance.The fact that you can zoom in from the panoramic view to almost read the sheet music on the Marine Corp. Band’s music stands shows us all the additional power / opportunities / experiences that digital formats can unlock.Kudos, David.

Would you pay for access to your favorite online communities? If so, which communities would you pay to access and what would you expect for your money? Facebook is one of the most important communities I access on a regular basis. Would you pay to get to Facebook? It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently. Blogger Craig Daitch wrote about how his Facebook account was recently disabled – at first he wanted an apology and an explanation – now he just wants access to his photo albums. I would certainly share his pain if my Facebook account was disabled. I would gladly pay $10 a month for Facebook – yes, $10 a month even during a time where I’m cutting back on my personal budget. Let me explain why I would want to pay up and also get your thoughts.Read More »

Wanted to pass along some resources for finding and evaluating conference in the media / tech / Web 2.0 space.1) Martine Paris over at Content NOW has an exhaustive list of events by month (click on the “2009 Events” tab in the top nav).2) Andrew Chen over at Futuristic Play has another list he and Jason Oberfest started, and have been adding to.3) Finally, GarysGuide.org allows you to look at events by city and has a fair number of free/online events as well. Little less targeted on the media & entertainment side, but another good resource. Anyone willing to share what their “must go” show line up for 2009 is?

We’ve received a lot of questions about the name “Cisco Eos” since launching the platform: What does Eos stand for? Where did the name come from? Etc. Let me try to answer some of those questions here:Cisco Eos is the name of the platform (note the capitalization of Eos; that becomes important in a second) Anyone that has tried to name a consumer-facing product recently knows how difficult it can be to come up with a name that is short, memorable, easy to say… AND is, well, distinct. After evaluating more names than what I care to remember, we settled on “Cisco Eos”. OK, so what does “Eos” mean? Cisco Eos is a proper noun, and doesn’t mean anything else. It’s not an acronym (hence, the lack of ALL CAPS). Read More »

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